Brooklyn Diasporism

Zach Barocas, Diasporist Diarist

The American Sublime

How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?

When General Jackson
Posed for his statue
He knew how one feels.
Shall a man go barefoot
Blinking and blank?

But how does one feel?
One grows used to the weather,
The landscape and that;
And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,

The spirit and space,
The empty spirit
In vacant space.
What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?

— Wallace Stevens

It is as great a mistake to think one understands all art as it is to think one understands no art at all. In either case, the presumption is that understanding is the primary condition under which art is experienced. There is, in fact, no reason to believe this is true.

X-Files

The chief comfort of the X-Files lies in its axiomatic starting point, that the truth is out there, not, as we came to learn in 2001, in here. That is, there is an underlying presumption of comfort and passivity that makes the show’s paranoia so compelling: if everything here seems to be okay, there must be a serious problem somewhere else.